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The campaign promises to aggressively challenge the religious right on the facts, the law and the Constitution. One defining characteristic of DefCon's approach -- is that it has apparently made a clean break with the dubious Inside-the-Beltway driven tactic of name-calling that has hobbled Democratic and liberal responses to the religious right for a generation. Instead of relying on focus-group derived labels such as "radical religious extremists," DefCon is choosing to focus on delivering clear, forceful arguments and messages. This is very good news and offers hope of the development of a far more productive strategy to persuade the American people that theocracy is not the direction we want to go.

"I believe, Chemerinsky declared, "that the greatest threat to liberty in the United States is posed by the religious right, largely comprised of Christian fundamentalists. Across a broad spectrum of issues they want to move the law in a radically more conservative direction, ultimately threatening our freedom."

DefCon also released a report today titled Islands of Ignorance, describing the threat to American science education in ten states and localities where "intelligent design" is being promoted by the religious right as an alternative to evolution.

DefCon also released a letter, signed by leading scientists, clergy, Nobel Laureates and others, urging the governors of all 50 states to work to stop the erosion of American science education.

Specifically, we are concerned about efforts to supplement or replace the teaching of evolution in our public schools with religious dogma or unscientific speculation. Science classes should help provide our children with the tools and scientific literacy they need to succeed in a 21st century economy.

We are well aware of studies showing American children falling behind those of other nations in their knowledge and understanding of science. We certainly will not be able to close this gap if we substitute ideology for fact in our science classrooms – limiting students' understanding of a scientific concept as critical as evolution for ideological reasons.

We do not oppose exposing our children to philosophical and spiritual discussion around the origin and meaning of life. There are appropriate venues for such discussion -- but not in the context of teaching science in a public school science classroom.

We have come together -- people of science and people of faith – for the sake of our children and the competitiveness of our country, to urge you to ensure that:

-- Science curricula, state science standards, and teachers emphasize evolution in a manner commensurate with its importance as a unifying concept in science and its overall explanatory power.

-- Science teachers in your state are not advocating any religious interpretations of nature and are nonjudgmental about the personal beliefs of students.

-- There are no requirements to teach "creation science" or related concepts such as "intelligent design," or to "teach the controversy" -- implying that there is legitimate scientific debate about evolution when there is not. Teachers should not be pressured to promote nonscientific views or to diminish or eliminate the study of evolution.

-- Publishers of science textbooks should not be required or volunteer to include disclaimers in textbooks that distort or misrepresent the methodology of science and the current body of knowledge concerning the nature and study of evolution.

Our nation's future rests, as always, in the hands of our children. We hope to have your commitment to ensure that our schools teach science, not ignorance, to our children as they prepare the next generation for the challenges of a new century.

The Journal of Religion and Society has an especially interesting study on the relationship between the degree of religiosity in a society and a number of social ills, including STD rates, murder rates, and much, much more, and the dramatic inverse correlation with strong belief in a divine creator.

First, the belief that religion is socially beneficial. The background:

In the United States many conservative theists consider evolutionary science a leading contributor to social dysfunction because it is amoral or worse, and because it inspires disbelief in a moral creator (Colson and Pearcey; Eve and Harrold; Johnson; Numbers; Pearcey; Schroeder).

...and:

Politically and socially powerful conservatives have deliberately worked to elevate popular concerns over a field of scientific and industrial research to such a level that it qualifies as a major societal fear factor.

Any disagreements so far? Good. Let's broaden things a bit:

Agreement with the hypothesis that popular religiosity is societally advantageous is not limited to those opposed to evolutionary science, or to conservatives. The basic thesis can be held by anyone who believes in a benign creator regardless of the proposed mode of creation, or the believer's social-political worldview. In broad terms the hypothesis that popular religiosity is socially beneficial holds that high rates of belief in a creator, as well as worship, prayer and other aspects of religious practice, correlate with lowering rates of lethal violence, suicide, non-monogamous sexual activity, and abortion, as well as improved physical health. Such faith-based, virtuous "cultures of life" are supposedly attainable if people believe that God created them for a special purpose, and follow the strict moral dictates imposed by religion.

So we here in the US, with our high rates of religiosity and belief in a divine creator, ought to be out and out paragons of societal well-being. Low murder rates, low STD rates, low teen pregnancy rates, the rest of the world really needs to be scrambling to build more churches and ordain more ministers in order to catch up, right?

Despite a significant decline from a recent peak in the 1980s (Rosenfeld), the U.S. is the only prosperous democracy that retains high homicide rates, making it a strong outlier in this regard (Beeghley; Doyle, 2000). Similarly, theistic Portugal also has rates of homicides well above the secular developing democracy norm. Mass student murders in schools are rare, and have subsided somewhat since the 1990s, but the U.S. has experienced many more (National School Safety Center) than all the secular developing democracies combined. Other prosperous democracies do not significantly exceed the U.S. in rates of nonviolent and in non-lethal violent crime (Beeghley; Farrington and Langan; Neapoletan), and are often lower in this regard.

But surely, you might ask, our societal sexual health must be far, far better than those godless furriners?

Oh yeah? Read on:

...rates of adolescent gonorrhea infection remain six to three hundred times higher (emphasis mine) in the U.S. than in less theistic, pro-evolution secular developing democracies (Figure 6). At all ages levels are higher in the U.S., albeit by less dramatic amounts. The U.S. also suffers from uniquely high adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, which are starting to rise again as the microbe's resistance increases (Figure 7).

(...)

Increasing adolescent abortion rates show positive correlation with increasing belief and worship of a creator, and negative correlation with increasing non-theism and acceptance of evolution; again rates are uniquely high in the U.S.

Hmmm...only a couple of topics and yet...methinks a pattern begins to emerge. The author of the study seems to agree:

In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies (Figures 1-9). The most theistic prosperous democracy, the U.S., is exceptional, but not in the manner Franklin predicted. The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly. The view of the U.S. as a "shining city on the hill" to the rest of the world is falsified when it comes to basic measures of societal health.

I would encourage you, the readers, if you've stuck with this so far, to go and read the original study. Despite its length, it's quite a read. Exhaustively debunking the theists' arguments, pointing out the inconsistencies and outright contradictions in their professed beliefs, and illustrating all this with a great measure of statistical and epidemiological data. And all this from a Jesuit university no less.

Jason T. Christy will take the reins in an apparent attempt to re-energize the organization. The group's press release notes that he is only 34 and he looks young in the accompanying photograph.

Besides his work as editor-in-chief at The Church Report, an online magazine which advocates typical Christian Right ideology, little is known about his views and ideas for the direction of the Coalition.

The New York Times reports that Pope Benedict XVI's young papacy plans to issue a rule barring gays from entering the priesthood. This move will hurt Benedict's plans to bring more Europeans back to the religion and will add to the already serious problems facing the priesthood.

"The need to revive the Roman Catholic Church in Europe was among the main reasons Benedict, a German cardinal, was chosen to succeed Pope John Paul II," according to a USA Today article which also documented the erosion of religious belief among Europeans. Banning gays from the priesthood is not the way to do it. In fact, the new rule will confirm Europeans' contention that the Church is an out-dated relic of the past with no relevance for their daily lives.

The change will turn away more than possible laypersons; it will discourage potential priests from entering the sacrament at a time when they are most needed by the Church. As documented in a 2003 piece by The Boston Globe, "Nationally, the number of new priests ordained each year has slowly declined since peaking between 1965 and 1970, said Dean Hoge, a sociologist at The Catholic University of America. Ordinations dropped by 7 percent in the 1980s and another 7 percent in the 1990s, with five to 10 seminaries closing each decade, he said. Seminaries are currently replacing just 30 to 40 percent of priests who are retiring or resigning each year." Can the Church afford to reject those who want to serve simply on the basis sexual orientation?

Unfortunately, it seems Pope Benedict will go ahead with the plan to discriminate against gays (one has to ask: what is the difference between a celibate heterosexual and a celibate homosexual?). This could spell a serious problem for the Church. Many have attributed the millenia-long perserverance of Catholicism to its ability to adapt to its social and political environment. Is the anti-gay rule the first in a series of steps that will slowly erode the relevance of the Catholic Church to progessive Western society?

With the Kansas State Department of Education considering changes to science instruction that would cast some doubt on the theory of evolution,* the New Republic decided to contact leading conservatives and ask for their thoughts on evolution and the competing theory of intelligent design. The results betray a perspective that's less highly evolved than you might expect from such an erudite group.

Of the 15 high-profile commentators contacted by the magazine, eight were willing to state unequivocally that they believe in evolution: George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum; William F. Buckley, Richard Brookhiser, Ramesh Ponnuru and Jonah Goldberg of the National Review; Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post; James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal; and David Brooks of the New York Times.

Of the remaining seven conservatives, some expressed doubts about evolution, while others declined to give a definitive answer. Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, withheld his "personal opinion," but he did offer this eye-opener: "I managed to have my children go through the Fairfax, Va., schools without ever looking at one of their science textbooks." (Are congratulations in order?)

Tax-cut zealot Grover Norquist responded, "I've never understood how an eye evolves." But don't bother suggesting that Norquist cruise down to the research library; he made it clear that his day planner is completely filled. "Given that we have to spend all our time crushing the capital gains tax," he said, "I don't have much time for this issue."

Pat Buchanan brushed the idea of Darwinian evolution aside, claiming it cannot "explain the creation of matter" -- though we're not sure the creation of matter, as opposed to the development of living matter, is what evolution attempts to explain. Buchanan also insisted that evolution has been a "malevolent force" in Western history, used by non-Christians to justify "horrendous" policies. Were we the only ones expecting Buchanan to cite religion, and not evolution, as a historically malevolent force?

Tucker Carlson, liberals' favorite box-tied chatterbox, said he would not "discount" the idea that God "created man in his present form."

Predictably, some of those who lined up behind mainstream science nevertheless kept their politics to the far right. "I don't believe that anything that offends nine-tenths of the American public should be taught in public schools," said Frum, putting his logic and math skills on display. "Christianity is the faith of nine-tenths of the American public ... I don't believe that public schools should embark on teaching anything that offends Christian principle."

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life puts the number of Americans who are Christian at roughly 75 percent, not 90 percent, while a Gallup poll from 2004 indicated that not every Christian is offended by evolution. According to the poll, about one-third of Americans believe in evolution, while 45 percent believe God created humans 10,000 years ago.

A couple of the conservatives ultimately allowed reason to prevail. Goldberg dismissed intelligent design as "God-in-the-gaps theorizing," while Krauthammer said the proposal to teach intelligent design as a "competing theory to evolution is ridiculous." But on the whole, we'd suggest that these well-heeled members of the commentariat hit the books, beginning with the "The Origin of Species."

###

(*Editor's note: since the original publication of this article on Salon.com, the chorus of commonsensical public opponents to the KS board of ed.'s plans has grown significantly; it now includes number Nobel laureates. See the RRW post below.)

A professional bodybuilder is suing television evangelist Pat Robertsonand others over Robertson's improper use of photographs showing thebodybuilder's dramatic weight loss. Through diet and exercise, including the use of a diet shake recipepromoted on Robertson's TV program, "The 700 Club," bodybuilder Phil Buschlost 200 pounds in 15 months. Busch is a natural bodybuilder who lost theweight and gained muscle without using drugs or steroids. He sent picturesshowing his body's transformation to the show's producers and agreed theycould be televised because he hoped to inspire others. He also allowed "The700 Club" to use the photographs to promote Robertson's "Weight LossChallenge." Weeks later, Busch discovered Robertson was selling "Pat's Diet Shake" forprofit through General Nutrition Center stores (GNC). When Busch realized hisimages had been used to promote a commercial product, rather than to inspirepeople to lose weight, he approached Robertson's Christian BroadcastingNetwork (CBN) and asked for compensation, but was turned down flat. "This was never about weight loss; it was all about money," Busch says."They only had my photographs because I thought 'The 700 Club' was trying tohelp others and because I knew CBN was a non-profit. Had I known Robertsonand his corporate buddies were making money using my pictures, I would havehandled everything differently." Attorney Jim Davis of Davis Munck, P.C., in Dallas, represents Busch inhis claims against Robertson, CBN and GNC. Davis says he wants to know why anon-profit such as CBN would promote Robertson's commercial product. "Pat Robertson should not have used Phil's photographs to make money forhimself and GNC without offering some compensation," Davis says. "Inaddition, if I were someone who had sent money to Pat Robertson, I'd be veryconcerned about the blurring of the lines between CBN's charitable mission asa non-profit corporation and a Robertson commercial venture with GNC. Itseems pretty clear to me that Robertson and his commercial partners, GNC andBasic Organics, have received private benefit from the ongoing promotion ofRobertson's diet shake on 'The 700 Club.'" The suit was filed in the 95th Judicial District Court in Dallas County,Texas. Davis Munck, P.C., is a Dallas-based law firm that represents clients fromstart-ups to Fortune 100 companies in high-stakes commercial litigation,corporate transactions and business formation, employment and intellectualproperty law.

(AP) LAWRENCE, Kan. - Thirty-eight Nobel Prize laureates asked state educators to reject proposed science standards that treat evolution as a seriously questionable theory, calling it instead the "indispensable" foundation of biology.The group, led by the writer Elie Wiesel, said it wanted to defend science and combat "efforts by the proponents of so-called intelligent design to politicize scientific inquiry."

The proposed standards, which could come up for final Board of Education approval later this year, are designed to expose students to more criticism of evolution but state in an introduction that they do not endorse intelligent design.

That increasingly popular theory argues that some features of the natural world are best explained as having an intelligent cause because they are well-ordered and complex. Its followers attack Darwin's evolutionary theory, which says natural chemical processes could have created the basic building blocks of life on Earth, that all life had a common ancestor and that man and apes shared a common ancestor.

Education Board Chairman Steve Abrams, a conservative Republican who has supported the proposed standards, said he was unmoved by the scientists' plea, which became public Thursday.

Rocked by financial debt, lawsuits and the loss of experienced political leaders, the Christian Coalition has become a pale imitation of its once-powerful self.

Some say the group — now based in Charleston and headed by a South Carolinian — is on life support, having been eclipsed by higher-profile, better-funded groups such as Focus on the Family.

“The coalition as we knew it doesn’t exist,” says Lois Eargle, former chairwoman of the Horry County Christian Coalition.

The 16-year-old organization once was a political juggernaut. But it has been in steady decline since it lost one of its most effective national leaders, executive director Ralph Reed. Reed left in 1997 to form his own political consulting firm in Atlanta.

“He was a great media figure, able to convey his particular message,” says Corwin Smidt, professor of political science at Calvin College, a Christian liberal arts school in Michigan. “But he was also a very bright young man and was able to articulate and make arguments effectively on behalf of the coalition.

“Today, the coalition doesn’t have anyone of that caliber. Once Reed left, the organization never recovered.”

During Reed’s tenure, the politically conservative coalition began distributing millions of voter guides containing candidates’ records on hot-button issues such as abortion and gay rights.

In 1994 alone, the group mailed 30 million postcards opposing President Clinton’s sweeping health-care proposal and made more than 20,000 phone calls to urge support for the balanced budget amendment — two issues that helped Republicans win control of Congress that year.

That was the coalition’s heyday.

Today, the organization founded in 1989 by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson has fallen on hard times. It has gone through two executive directors, seen its revenues drop dramatically, and watched its clout and influence wane.

In 1999, Roberta Combs, who had headed the coalition’s South Carolina chapter, took over as national executive director and began to run the show.

Her tenure has been marked by internal strife, which some observers say was a result of her management style. Combs fired, demoted or drove away much of the coalition’s seasoned political staff, critics say.

Black staffers filed a $39 million racial discrimination suit against the coalition, alleging they were forced to use a separate entrance at its headquarters. The suit was settled with an out-of-court payment of some $300,000 to the employees.

Reed saw the impending financial problems and staff conflicts and quickly left a “sinking ship,” says Furman University political scientist Jim Guth, a nationally recognized scholar on the Christian Right movement. “Reed’s departure was the final nail in the coalition’s coffin.”

FROM POWERHOUSE TO AFTERTHOUGHT

Today, the cash-strapped group faces a host of problems, not the least of which is its inability to pay its bills.

Most recently, on June 2, Pitney Bowes filed a lawsuit against the Christian Coalition for $13,649 in unpaid postage. The issue was settled out of court, says Pitney Bowes attorney Robert Bernstein of Charleston. The coalition now is making monthly payments to help erase the debt.

The coalition, once a powerful national voice for traditional family values, has moved its headquarters to Charleston where Combs spends most of her time.

The group also maintains a small operation in Washington that has a full-time staff of 10. In 1994, when the coalition was at its peak, its headquarters employed as many as 25 full-time paid staffers.

Combs denies the coalition is in trouble. But she acknowledges money has been harder to come by since Robertson stepped down as coalition president in February 2002 and turned control over to her.

The coalition is looking for a media spokesman — someone of Reed’s caliber — to be a talking head on the television news shows and to put the organization back on the map.

“We have not had a media spokesman for a good while now,” says Drew McKissick, a Columbia-based political consultant and coalition activist. “You’ve got to show the flag these days. It makes a big difference in people’s perception. We need to boost our profile so folks know we exist.”

Horry’s Eargle thinks that’s a waste of time.

“I don’t see anyone stepping up to the plate that could revitalize the coalition,” she says.

In many ways, the coalition has been replaced by organization’s like James Dobson’s Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council in Washington, says University of Toledo professor John Green.

Both of those groups were singled out when “Christian conservatives” were credited with pushing President Bush over the top in his 2004 re-election bid. The Christian Coalition was barely an afterthought in the presidential race.

‘DON’T COUNT US OUT’

Still, the group wields influence in a handful of states — Iowa, Alabama, Texas, Michigan and Florida.

But that’s about it, Green says.

The coalition calls itself America’s largest Christian grass-roots organization with more than 2 million supporters.

But former members, like Eargle, feel the coalition has outlived its usefulness.

“The Christian Coalition did a wonderful job at its time,” Eargle says. “It did a good job in getting grass-roots people involved. Maybe it has served its time.”

This begs the larger question: Can the one-time political behemoth survive at all?

Combs says it will.

“All organizations have their ups and downs, and there are seasons. The Christian Coalition will always be out there. Don’t count us out.”

U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton "declared Wednesday that the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools is unconstitutional," according to a CNN report. The judge corrently ruled that the pledge's reference to one nation "'under God' violates school children's right to be "free from a coercive requirement to affirm God" and is thus unconstitutional

The Disestablishment and Free Exercise clauses of the First Amendment prohibit the government from indoctrinating citizens, including children, into religious belief. Forcing a child to recite a pledge daily is indoctrination at its most explicit. When the pledge includes an affirmation of 1. the existence of God and 2. a specific characteristic of this God (ie that the God is over the United States), the government is engaged in indoctrinating citizens into religious beliefs. For this reason, Judge Karlton was wise to rule that daily reciting of the pledge in public schools unconstitutional.

The Religious Right will almost certainly take advantage of this decision by inappropriately portraying it as an attack on religion. However, if the pledge required students to say "We are one nation with no god," I am willing to bet the Christian Right would be more than happy to embrace the principled rejection of religious indoctrination that provided the basis for the decision. Whatever the religious or anti-religious belief in question, government is prohibited by the constitution from establishing or propogating it.

Unfortunately, the ruling only applies to the Sacramento area until it is upheld or struck down by a higher court.

One of the architects of modern American conservatism (perhaps the term "New Right" is applicable here?), Paul Weyrich, gives us a blunt reminder in this essay of the narrowness of today's conservatism relative to religion: conservatism is, by definition, expressly "Christian" for "most" conservatives.

The Amish are cultural conservatives. They live according to the beliefs most conservatives espouse: Christian faith, strong families, close-knit communities where people depend on each other, communities based on the church. (My emphasis)

Communities based on the church. Not based on "Judeo-Christian" values or "traditional morality." Based on the church. Weyrich in this essay, which, to me, was surprisingly Romantic--even Luddite (and certainly not Federalist/Hamiltonian)--reveals a vision for an America where, let's be honest, anyone who isn't a Christian isn't around. (Where did they disappear to? I shutter to think.)

This vision is in conflict with those of our nation's Founders, who stressed personal liberty, not Christian conformity, for [most white, male] citizens, including the liberty to practice any kind of faith or non-faith desired so long as it didn't harm others.

There does not seem to be in Weyrich's essay a vision of a theocracy, strictly speaking. He does not write of a "state based on the church." I believe that Weyrich's vision for the state is ultimately a dominionist one; however, that's not what he's stressing in this particular essay. But, he needn't stress the governmental for the essay to be chilling; in fact, it could be argued that in this essay he's stressing something even grander than theocracy, something that envelopes government andmore: an entire culture that is "Christian" (as he defines Christian) and nothing else.